Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/171

 frequently travel long distances, especially to Ireland, and are sometimes absent from their monastery for months at a time. They are, as has been said, the great bread-winners of the community; they receive from five to ten pounds per week for their services, and bring home large sums in alms and Mass-stipends—if a smaller fee is offered them they never return to that parish. In fact I have known a Franciscan superior (whose rule forbids him to claim any fee for his services, or to receive any money whatever) maintain a warm correspondence with a parish priest on the insufficiency of his fee. ‘Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis,’ would be an appropriate motto for the friars to substitute for their time-honoured ‘In sanctitate et doctrina’ (which, in its turn, was a usurper; ‘Deus meus et omnia’ was the motto of the simple Francis of Assisi). However, the missionaries have often very severe labours, and many of them work with untiring industry and devotion; they have service every evening with one heavy sermon, an instruction, and a number of fatiguing ceremonies, and I have known many priests to collapse under the constant strain. The enormous number of confessions they hear adds much to their exertions. At the same time there are numbers of them who much prefer the change and comparative comfort of the life to confinement in their monastery; they lighten their task by preaching the same sermons everywhere, and they usually find the presbytery much more comfortable